The drive up the mountain is long enough for your mind to invent every kind of horror. You cry silently, because crying loudly has never helped you. You hold your bag to your chest as if it can protect you. You wonder what a lonely old man wants with a seventeen-year-old girl. Work until your hands bleed? Nights you don’t want to imagine? A cage in a place no one will ever find you? The road climbs higher, twisting through trees and rocks, and the town disappears behind you like a memory you never asked for. Every bump in the dirt road feels like a warning. The mountains look beautiful in a way that makes you angry, because beauty shouldn’t exist on a day like this. Don Ramón drives without speaking much, his hands steady on the wheel like he’s done this road a thousand times.
When the hacienda finally appears, it doesn’t match the stories. You expect something decaying, abandoned, haunted. Instead you see a wide, clean property ringed by pines, the air smelling sharp and green, the kind of air you didn’t know could exist. The house is large, wood-paneled, well-kept, with windows that reflect the sky. It looks alive. It looks cared for. That confuses you more than ugliness would. Don Ramón leads you inside, and the warmth hits you like a surprise. There are old photographs on the walls, heavy furniture that looks built to last, and the scent of coffee lingering like someone cares about mornings here. You stand still, waiting for the trap to reveal itself. Waiting for the moment he becomes who you fear he is.
Don Ramón sits at a table and gestures for you to sit too. His voice is quieter than you expected, softer at the edges, like he’s speaking around a wound. “María,” he says, and the sound of your name in his mouth feels strange, because he says it like it belongs to you, not like it’s an insult. “I didn’t bring you here to hurt you.” You don’t know how to respond, because no adult has ever said that to you and meant it. Your body stays tense, ready to run, even though there’s nowhere to run to. Don Ramón reaches into a drawer and pulls out an envelope that looks old enough to have survived wars. It’s yellowed, sealed with a red stamp. On the front, in bold letters, one word sits like a loaded gun: WILL.
He slides it across the table.
